


Kindling

by senatorwiggles



Series: Age of Fire [2]
Category: Dark Souls (Video Games)
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-12-22
Updated: 2019-12-24
Packaged: 2021-02-25 22:55:13
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,411
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21893230
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/senatorwiggles/pseuds/senatorwiggles
Summary: This fic is going through an entire re-work.
Series: Age of Fire [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1685806
Comments: 2
Kudos: 6





	1. Sunset

“Oscar…” Ernest’s hand, wet with someone’s blood, gripped the hilt of his great sword. Whoever had dealt the final blow didn’t matter anymore. Gwyn’s body laid prone and limp riddled with lightning burns. Ernest’s blade speared through his gut.

“Run, Oscar. Run and don’t look back.”

The three of them sat at the edge of the Kiln. Solaire nervously toyed with his talisman, Oscar chewed on his lip and sharpened his blade, and Ernest fiddled with a loose string beneath his chain mail. They didn’t like lying to Solaire, but they had no intention to kindle the flame. Their sunlit knight could sense something was amiss, but he trusted his friends too dearly to question it. Perhaps, he thought, it was simply nerves. 

But they had met Kaathe, the serpent and brother of Frampt, and Kaathe had explained to them the cycles of light and dark. Fire must fade like the sun sets and brings upon night. The age of Fire must die so that the age of Humanity can rise.

What they had learned was that the flame was the source of their curse. The only way to truly free humanity from undeath was to let the fire die. The fire sapped the soul of a man until he was hollow. The fire refused to let the humans die. The fire burned their dark humanity to feed itself. It consumed the souls they collected, and so long as they fed it, they would never be free. They would kill Gwyn and extinguish the flame. This was their plan.

“So… Solaire…” Ernest looked up from his distraction. “Before we do anything… After we get to the fire…” 

“We will pause. Yes, my friend, when the act is done, we will stop and think. It would do no good for us to all burn at once, do you think? How brightly we would burn, but the brighter the flame, the shorter it lives.”

Oscar winced. It was Solaire’s god they were going to kill. And they couldn’t even bring themselves to be honest with him.

Oscar knelt by Solaire gripping his hand between them, his friend propped up ever so slightly. His armor was rent along his gut, dark blood pooled around him. “Ernest?” Solaire’s eyes, once bright and alert, were flicking rapidly without seeing.

“Oscar run. Leave Solaire. I-- We’re kindling the flame.

“Ernest that--”

“Either we kindle the flame and Solaire dies human, or we wait and find him hollow. Oscar!” Ernest left his sword in Gwyn and lifted Solaire from Oscar’s hands. “We’re lighting the flame, Oscar. Please… Don’t let anyone follow us. Don’t… Don’t burn Oscar… I love you… Don’t let yourself burn here. Don’t…”

Oscar tore off his helmet and grabbed his friends, crying and kissing them. “I promise, my beams of sunlight, both of you, I promise.”

He tore out of the kiln leaving his friends behind. Old dirt and loose stones crumbled and rolled beneath him, but he would not let this be for nothing. He would not let this happen again.

Ernest held Solaire, a dying man, and weeped, crumpling by the edge of the flames. He knew there was no time for mourning-- Solaire was on a timer, and he wouldn’t dare let him go hollow. Not when he could stop it. As he reached for the flame, his tears clouded his vision. The flame gently licked his hand at first then grabbed him like a ravenous animal. He didn’t scream, he couldn’t scream, not as it lept from him to the dying man in his arms-- and in a flash he couldn’t feel anything anymore. 

Oscar reached the door to a smiling Kaathe. He paused, confused and horrified, and in his hesitation the kindling blast threw him into the Lord Vessel. The flames seared Kaathe, and the serpent screamed and slipped away.

But Oscar.

Oscar laid near death in the bowl of the Lord Souls, his armor blackened and his spirit bound. He would come back from this. He had to. He understood what a promise was. 


	2. Sir Kirk

“What in the gods’ names?” Oscar watched as a red limp body rose from the earth like a puppet drawn by its strings. The shape slowly took proper form, the eyes of the spirit locking with Oscar’s before strange barbed armor coalesced over the body. Ernest, mere feet away, heard the unearthly wind that came with a phantom and could only shout, “Oscar! Move!” Before the spirit came to and lunged at the knight. 

\---

Sir Kirk had never been a particularly cruel man. His armor was twisted and barbed in a guresome display, but he preferred to think of it as a secondary layer of defense. Like a cactus. But there was one object of his ire that he daydreamed of destroying. He had never felt such great hatred and frustration, and gods damn him it would drive him to the brink.

He couldn’t remember what the sun looked like, what the wind felt like, what fresh air tasted like. For time unknown, he’d sat in the bowels of blight town smashing his head against that damnable witch. She had to be evil. Sadistic even. It didn’t matter that she brought swift death, she always greeted him with a smug smile. No words. Just a smile and hellfire. 

There were times he wasn’t sure if he was genuinely fighting her or if he was hallucinating.

Kirk pulled off his gauntlet. His hand was dried and dead. He was going hollow, he might already be hollow. Was reliving the same battle what going hollow was like? Was he fighting someone else when he drew his blade? He had to find a way out of this… The witch didn’t care, and gods be damned he needed to ring the bell she seemed to guard. There _had_ to be another way around her…

He was a shell of a man. He knew it to be true because the other hollows left him be. Kirk trudged through the swamp, no longer really aware of himself. At some point he’d grown aware of heat like a distant furnace, but there was nothing left in him to care. Unaware that he’d long since passed his goal, he scraped against a wall vaguely aware of it’s shift. When he stumbled over a man, he made no indication of regret or mistake. 

A pair of hands touched him when he fell. They were warm and shaking. They winced but insisted. The owner pressed a precious sprite into his chest as he lay there ready to die, and his world re-awoke. He opened his eyes to the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen.

She wasn’t beautiful because her hair gleamed like moonlight or because her figure was attractive. She was beautiful in her pain, for even hurting she had helped him. Kirk couldn’t quite recall the last gentle face he’d seen, and still lying there, his eyes began to tear up. He shifted to sit up right, to see the woman who’d spared him. Some part of his mind recognized that the great spider body should have sparked fear in him, but it was all he could do to not reach out and touch one of the lethargic limbs.

He shifted to his knees, hands out beside him, and said, “Speak, Fair Lady. I swear myself to you so that I might repay your kindness.”

\---

Oscar pulled his blade back out of the fading spirit. “Who in their right mind would sit in a place like this just to invade another undead’s world? It’s filthy. It’s terrible. Even the rats here are diseased.”

\---

It was the man he’d stumbled over who explained it to him. The Fair Lady was in pain, and Humanity was the only thing that could ease it. Kirk was determined to aid her, but he stopped in horror when he saw the Witch still sat in her web waiting for undead to run right to her. A large part of him still wanted to kill her, but he couldn’t. He was both incapable and unwilling. She was Quelaag, the bane of his existence and the greatest ally of the Fair Lady. 

She smiled quite sweetly at him before tossing cracked orbs at him. Unsure what they were, he first ducked to avoid being hit. Before too long, he realized what she was telling him to do.

Invade.

Pillage.

Retrieve the humanity he owed her sister.

Protect Quelaan. Protect her sister. 

**Author's Note:**

> Kindling is a series of ficlets taken from a co-op playthrough with two cosplay characters. It primarily features Ernest, a Berenike knight, and Oscar of Astora with occasional appearances by Solaire of Astora.


End file.
